


Your Still Remains

by ken_ichijouji (dommific)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hand Jobs, M/M, POV First Person, Role Reversal, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 10:43:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8398504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/pseuds/ken_ichijouji
Summary: "You're not an idiot, Mustang. Don't act like one."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of Archer/Kimblee and Roy/Riza.
> 
> I dunno, I wrote this a decade ago and in some ways it's the best thing I've ever done. I was asked to put this up here, so I am. I'm not likely to change it, though, as a head's up.
> 
> Takes place in an alternate version of the events in Lior where instead of a Philosopher's stone we just got a straight up war.
> 
> The excerpt at the beginning is a line from Joseph Arthur's "In the Sun."

_'Cause when you showed me myself, you know I became someone else._

\---

Lior had not gone the way the Fuhrer had hoped. Scar had been ready for us, he had mobilized all of the people together and things had spiraled rapidly out of control. The infantry had already been deployed, men had been lost, and both my own and Archer's units had to be sent in to clean things up.

Always cleaning up after other people.

Needless to say, things didn't go as planned and, needless to say, in the confusion we all got separated. When things go badly in those situations, you're ordered to return to base and regroup later.

So I went home.

If you can even call it that. If that word's even appropriate for what that place was.

I came home after I fought my way through fire, rain, sand. I fought through screaming, those horrible sights and sounds once more, children crying for Momma, grown men sobbing for their children, their wives, hell even their pets as they asked "God what was that? What the _hell_ was that?" 

Not that there is a God because surely one wouldn't have allowed things like that to happen, but it drove me a little bit forward. Maybe one day...maybe I won't ever have to hear that again. Maybe I'll see something besides cold corpses and fear-paralyzed survivors when I close my eyes.

So I came home and somehow no one else was there. It was just me in an empty room, no way of knowing if Fuery or Falman or Breda or Havoc or Armstrong or Al or Ed had made it through okay.

Or Hawkeye.

The room in the safeouse was empty, mausoleum empty, silent but for the click of my boots on the wood. It wasn't dark then, the sun was just setting. The smoke had covered the sky like some sort of steel blanket during the day, but it made for a spectacular sunset. I couldn't help but watch it as I stared out the window to wait for word, or better yet, to see my unit make it home. 

My muscles felt like broken cement, shattered and stiff. I'd had to switch hands back and forth so as to not wear out the gloves and my fingers. Easy as a snap, right? That was about when the headache kicked in, too many thoughts. Too many thoughts all alone at the end of the world. I'm not a good person. I'm a good soldier. Alchemy should help people. I destroyed their lives. I'm going to be Fuhrer. I'm going to Hell. I'm in Hell. I sent Riza out into Hell. I want her to come back. I can't love her, she's my subordinate and we both have jobs to do. Maybe she's alone. Maybe she's not, maybe she's with Havoc and the others and they're taking care of each other. Maybe they're all searching for me, maybe they think that I'm lost.

Or dead. 

My head throbbed and my heart ached. It was too much, too many thoughts for one person to have at one time, almost like I was having a stroke. No imagery, no pictures just whys, hows, what ifs, wheres. Too many unanswered questions. I didn't even know what anything was for, too tired from being caught in between so many bright lights and rough noise. Nothing to see but points on a wheel of color, nothing to hear but whistles, crackles, and bangs out at the edge of everything.

I just wanted to sleep. Just...pull off the singed uniform and (now black) gloves and lay down for six, eight, fourteen hours. I was hot, cold, tired, burned, and I just did not want my sensory overload anymore. The game was over, the gig was up. I could have gone to my quarters and to bed, but then I would have been cold and alone in bed.

Where the hell was Riza?

The door opened and I turned from where I was. Someone to report to me, one of my men, that's who it had to have been. Who else?

"Kimbley?" Someone asked in a voice that I only didn't recognize at first because of the roughness and slight fear in the words. Oh. That's who it was going to be. "Kimbley is that...oh."

It was definitely him. He was still fully dressed of course, because if anyone could walk through the gates of Hell at perfect attention in uniform it'd be Lieuten...excuse me, Colonel Frank Archer. 

"We're the first ones back," I said. 

"Oh," was his response. "I'll wait." He sat somewhat awkwardly in one of the chairs. He also ran a hand through his hair and stared at one of the far walls.

"For...Kimbley?"

"For it doesn't matter." His voice was hollow, not calm and silken like it should have been. "I had to come back, just like you."

But not just like me. He wasn't a figment of my imagination, unless I had actually gone insane by then. One of the most self-serving, unfeeling bastards I had ever met was sitting in front of me in a uniform that was as spotless as it could be given the circumstances. His pale skin had random soot marks on it, his normally slicked-back brown hair hung down far enough to cover his eyes and it ruined any illusion he could have had of still being in control.

He was waiting to be saved. He was waiting for _Kimbley_ to save him.

I didn't register that I was speaking until the words came out. "How long?" I didn't know I was walking until I sat on the edge of the table next to his chair. 

"What? How long until we all die? How long until we can leave?" 

"How long...you two." I waved a hand, trusting it to fill in any blanks. The headache was waning, but the hot-cold skin feeling had decided to stick around. 

"Since the incident at South Headquarters. March...or was it April?" Archer kept his eyes on the wall as he spoke and I might as well have not been there. "No it was April so...five months. Six in two weeks." He snorted softly. "Six months if it's been a week. I actually thought he was going to kill me after the first time, just clap his hands together and I'd be pieces in the sheets and blood on his face. He came back to my house the night afterwards, and without a word shoved me against the wall. Tore off my clothing." He finally looked at me then, his eyes pale and still. "I keep waiting for him to do it and it never comes."

He sounded disappointed.

He actually sounded disappointed that Kimbley hadn't murdered him and I was trying to wrap my brain around five months. 

Did they have dinner together? Did they go on dates? 

Anything other than what it seemed like, the way he looked at Kimbley and the way that Kimbley probably whispered that he'd do for now. I never thought before then that I'd so much as exchange ten civil words with Archer and here I was feeling almost sorry for him. Then again, I'd never seen him doing anything besides giving orders, brown-nosing the brass, and marshalling his plans with that self-satisfied smile he seemed to always have. 

Well, it made him a lot more interesting than anything else he ever did.

"He won't do it. He told me that I'm too skilled at..." He paused. "I'm so good at making him come after he makes explosions, that's why he hasn't just done it." He sounded washed up and defeated, his words a verbal white flag. It made it hard for me to keep listening to him, this corrupt and evil person who was just as tired and pathetic as I was. The whole time I had been close enough to touch him just to see if he really was as trigger happy as they said. The air was full of heat and dirt, secrets and lies. If I had looked more closely at him, my eyes would have burned.

My eyes began to burn for another reason and it made me hold back laughter at my own cyncism. Archer was an asshole, but he wasn't soulless. He wasn't completely cold and at some point he had actually fallen in love with his pet Alchemist. If it hadn't been so terribly sad...I would have laughed. 

He would have laughed if he knew of my concern over Ri...my men. "Does he know?"

"He knows." His fingers were laced so tightly together that his knuckles were turning red and it was then that I noticed the scrapes, the stains and burns. "Not your conventional fairy-tale story, I'm afraid."

"He love you back?" 

He threw his head back and laughed, the first time I had ever seen him do so. It was sharp, heartless laughter, the kind that went with the humorless smile in his eyes.

"You're not an idiot, Mustang. Don't act like one." He sneered at me and it made me relax. Archer was back to hating me, all was right in the world. "You knew the answer. How could he possibly love me while you're around? Everybody loves you. Everybody loves Roy Mustang and no matter what, I'm just a pale substitute. I can't even lead a battle or have a relationship without hiding in the shadows of our great Flame Alchemist." 

I blinked. 

I wasn't oblivious, I knew that I flirted with the girls in the secretary pool and most of the single nurses. I knew that people called me an ass-kisser or worse the Military's Little Darling. I hadn't forgotten about Ishbal, either, and Kimbley and I stuck in a foxhole together, my arm coming between us to keep some distance, not because of lack of interest but simple fear. I had killed dozens of people, even civillians. Archer, for all of his flaws as a person, was a near-perfect soldier and he was an educated, clever, polite, well-bred, and good looking man with as good of a record as my own and an ego that destroyed any guilt. This was the man that felt he was a poor imitation of me?

"Your jacket's filthy. Are you going to take it off?"

"What's the point?" He looked at me with a clarity in his expression. "If I didn't have it, I wouldn't be myself."

Touché. "Would you rather be me? I promise you, my life's not all accolades and a pocket watch."

There was another snort. "Don't be pathetic."

"I'm serious." I was. "I could be you and you could be me." I looked to the window again and whispered "I don't feel like being Roy Mustang right now."

Somehow he understood what I meant. Somehow he knew how I felt. 

Somehow we weren't that far apart.

"Your jacket won't fit me. Your sleeves are too long." He said. "Besides, I tried being you. I think I don't much care for it."

I sincerely hoped that he hadn't meant what that sounded like. But I could see it, Kimbley knew the array. It would have been simple to get a pair of gloves, draw it on. We were both pale, we both had dark hair and his wasn't cut all that differently from mine when I saw it down. In dim lighting, it'd be easy to pretend and it had probably only twisted the knife.

I had never thought I had given him a reason to hate me, but I really had given him every reason without even trying.

"I'm tired, Archer," I dared to lightly finger one of his sleeves. Flames are warmth, they are fleeting and ultimately burn themselves out; ice is unfeeling and immutable, perfect as long as it stays untouched. How would it be if, for once, I was ice instead of fire? "I want to see what it's like. I want to see what it's like being you because, quite frankly, being me has worn me out."

His face went blank as if he was at a loss of what to do. Because he was. He stood up so we could be face to face and somehow I had never noticed until then that we were the same height. "Do you really want to know? I can show you right here." He would teach me like a drill instructor, like an alchemy tutor. Like a big brother or a father.

"I asked you to, didn't I?" I reached a hand up to brush that hair out of his face because it was too close to looking in a mirror. He grabbed both of my wrists and his eyes were suddenly hard and hot. There was power there, power and lust. He pushed me back onto the table and held my wrists above my head. It wasn't necessary...I wasn't going to run.

"This is what it's like," he whispered. "Take notes the first time, because I won't repeat myself."

Desert-chapped lips crushed against mine and from that one movement I knew what he meant. If I had somehow been him instead of me, if the only thing that was mine when out of uniform was the body of a person who's heart didn't beat for me and who still wanted me more than almost anything. I wasn't sure if I was overcome by my own want or his, but it was enough to make me moan into his mouth. He tasted warm, like gunpowder, ashes, glycerine, Kimbley. He pulled away to show me flushed skin and eyes that glittered like a knife. 

"Do you need me to stop?" Was he giving me an out? Was it part of the game? Should I - he - say yes? "Say no now or I'll keep going. I'll show you everything while our teams...our teams walk in on me fucking you on this table."

"So you don't think anyone else is coming back." The want gave way to a pain in my chest. I needed it to go away. I needed to be cold. "If I wanted you to stop I wouldn't have started this. Keep going...I don't care."

My head slammed into the table as he pushed me into it, his kiss harder that time. He let go of my hands and I wound them around him to pull him closer. I had tried to make order out of things and all I got in return was this chaos, this sordid not-quite affair on a table. I didn't want him to stop though; this experiment was my doing and I had to follow through.

"You're so pathetic." He pulled the snaps of my jacket open and then unbuttoned my shirt. "Do you honestly think this impresses me? Do you think this proves some sort of point?" 

I bared my teeth and placed one of my knees in between his legs. I felt his erection and he slowly ground himself against me. Somehow I wanted him despite how confusing and disturbed things had become. Frank Archer the cold and selfish colonel, was caught between his wishes and his needs. We were both caught there together and I couldn't figure out which of us had it worse.

"You like it," I muttered as I leaned on my elbows to kiss him, my tongue sliding up into his mouth. His hands were inside of my shirt mapping my skin before he knocked me back down flat on the table.

"Naturally," he whispered as he reached down to unbutton my pants. My hands removed his jacket at the same time, mirroring his earlier movements. He wasn't simply angry, he was downright pissed and I had no clue why. I just wanted more. He licked up my neck to my ear and calmly said "Such a good soldier as you march along happily to your distruction, right, Archer?"

We both froze.

Those were Kimbley's words. He had said them to him, and I could almost see his face. I could see his eyes, those gold eyes with the same look in them as when he destroyed a building or...other things. Everything he said Kimbley had said first and I wondered if I had responded according to the script. He had used Kimbley's words for me, had I used his own words for him?

It suddenly occurred to me that there was something very wrong with what we were doing.

But I wouldn't stop. I wouldn't let him stop. We both needed this to find our ways, to find out what this was all for. I leaned forward and kissed his neck.

"You...don't want to stop?" He asked in a small voice. This time I was allowed the brush the hair out of his face, his hot and slightly fearful face. Two people stuck between everything they knew as the world tumbled down.

"Are you backing down? Do you think you're going to hurt me?" It was like I could hear his voice coming from my mouth. "You do realize that I won't break? You clearly don't know the first thing about me if you think that I could crack so easily."

He pressed himself into me, and I wanted it. I wanted him, whatever him he was. "Shut up," he rasped. "Just shut up." We couldn't have possibly been ourselves. Roy Mustang would not want Frank Archer and Frank Archer would not want Roy Mustang. Kimbley wanted Roy from afar and he wanted Archer near, while Archer wanted Kimbley the same as he wanted everything and Roy struggled with his feelings for his Lieutenant and everyone wanted themselves dead. It was horrible and ugly, and in no way was it anything but a disturbed play in two acts.

"Try to make me," was my reply. Blue to gold and back again, that is what I saw when I met his eyes. Different colors for different people...was he seeing my eyes as the color of a night or afternoon sky? 

He smiled and it was icy and sharp. This was pure deja vu for him, he'd said the words and lived the tale. That's all. His tongue began to burn a trail down my neck once more, his hand down my pants as he stroked me. The end of everything and I was living inside his private horror. 

And I don't know if it was because it wasn't mine, but was so much better than the one I had been trapped with. I couldn't be myself anymore with so much uncertain. I couldn't be Roy Mustang with people looking to me as their hope while my own lay dead somewhere in the desert. He expunged everything about me with a spit-soaked hand, with a fierce kiss that stole my breath and that was fine because I didn't really want to beg him to keep going.

And yes, he would do. He would do just fine.

He kept kissing me as I reached my own hand down his trousers to return the favor, probably so he didn't have to see his own face. Moans against my mouth were the only approval I got for my efforts and I forgot...was I supposed to be him or me? Was he Kimbley or himself? It really didn't mean anything, but it would have been nice to know just to keep track.

After a few more moments, we collapsed against each other. Panting, sweaty, sticky, maybe less afraid. Maybe more. His hands were unsteady as they smoothed my hair and I tried to process everything that had happened, everything that I had learned.

"We need to straighten up," he murmured. "Wartime or not, I've no interest in getting court-martialed for fraternization."

He really was fucked up. "Right." We both began to put ourselves right again, dressing as quickly as we could. I put my jacket on and as I began to fasten it I glanced down at my sleeve. I took it off without a word and handed it to him.

"It's yours," I said. "I grabbed the wrong one by mistake."

He didn't meet my eyes as he handed me the one in his hands. "I thought so. The sleeves were too long." 

Frank Archer, the cold and selfish colonel who was caught between what all he wished for and all he needed. He had a body that wanted him but didn't love him. He was a good soldier with blood and burns on his hands and broken cement bones that matched the ash on his uniform.

And as I finished putting myself back together, I had to ask...was I any better? Was I even any different?

The answer made the pains in my head and heart return.

We waited for everyone else to arrive.


End file.
